


The Road to Hell

by BasicWebbyStan (GreaterComplexity)



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Character Study, McDuck Clan - Freeform, Prequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29240448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreaterComplexity/pseuds/BasicWebbyStan
Summary: How did Magica DeSpell become the villain she is today? Where did her hatred for Clan McDuck come from? How did she become so powerful? There's only one person alive who remembers, and he's finally ready to remember.
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not compliant with any canon other than the 2017 reboot.

Prologue

The McDuck family stood panting as the giant spider retreated back into its hole. “Is that all you got? Huh!?!” Dewey’s seemingly boundless enthusiasm could be grating at times, but just now it was a welcome bit of levity. 

“Come on, kids, The treasure should be in the next antechamber.” Scrooge’s Scottish brogue echoed through the stone halls of the temple.

“I think I’m just gonna lie here for a bit” Louie panted loudly. As the others began to make their way further into the temple, Louie reluctantly picked himself up off the floor and followed at a safe distance. 

“Everyone stop” Huey exclaimed suddenly. “Do you hear that?” a strained moaning sound was emanating from a side corridor. The voice was hoarse, like someone who had gone days without water. 

“Pleaaase……. If you’re out there….. If you can hear me…… Please, help” 

“We’re coming sir!” Webby cried, but she was stopped by Scrooge’s hand on her shoulder. 

“I recognize that voice” Scrooge’s eyes became distant, and he positioned himself between the kids and the voice. “Who are you? Tell us your name.” 

“I was trapped. She left me here to die.” The voice replied weakly. “You know her, don’t you…. You’re… a McDuck” 

When they finally got close enough, their torchlight revealed a bizarrely misshapen figure. Thoroughly ensnared in thick, clingy spiderwebs, the figure seemed to be a duck, but with black feathers sticking out at odd angles and the scaly legs of a raven. 

“It cannae be,” Scrooge exclaimed, “Poe DeSpell” 

Chapter One

With hindsight, we can say that the birth of Magica DeSpell was a momentous event in history, but at the time few would have thought so. Obviously, I don’t remember it myself, since I hatched mere months earlier, but according to our parents, I was the only one in the room. In those days it was common to leave eggs unattended for hours at a time if you had a place warm enough for them. Our house was larger than most, enough that the kitchen stayed warm all year. As such, when my mother went out to the market, she felt safe leaving me in a crib and the egg that held my sister in a bassinet near the hearth, and she returned to a wet, drippy, newly hatched duckling. I was the only one present for the intervening hours, meaning I have known Molly DeSpell longer than anyone else, for what it’s worth. 

When I say my parents were sorcerers, you might get this idea of powerful, revered magic wielders who held the lives of many in their hands. The truth is far more mundane. Like most folks in our barely-a-town, we lived close to the land and made a living with sweat and dirt, in a house of waud and dauble. We chopped wood, weeded the garden, and pumped water from the well, same as our neighbors. The one thing that set us apart was a bookshelf of grimoire in our parent’s bedroom, written in languages even they could barely read. All in all, it didn’t amount to much, but it was enough. Our neighbors all tipped their hats to my family as we walked through town and bent over backward to help with any favor we needed, for fear of provoking our family’s wrath. Mother and father were no less superstitious, convinced that we were a breed apart, worthy of the reverence and deference we were given. I personally doubt my father could make good on any of his threats to curse our neighbors, but since he never tried, we’ll never know. Perhaps one of the ancestors in our long and storied line could have mustered more than a light rain shower or a conjured omen, but that talent was long gone by our generation. 

Paltry as it was, you can be sure we began to learn the family trade as soon as we were able. Many of my earliest memories are of my mother, tired and sweaty, taking a spellbook off the shelf and trying to teach us some incantation in Gaelic or Archidiluvian, taking half an hour to turn an acorn into a marble or cause a needle suspended by a threat to point toward the nearest source of freshwater. As children such feats were positively captivating, I recall, and we were more than happy to spend hours practicing. 

At the age of five, I had already figured out, well before mother and father, that she would master every new spell before I did. It made no difference at first because I would usually have it figured out by the time our daily lessons began, and we would each claim to have mastered it first. Before long, however, it was useless to lie. Even as I worked on the same charm for days, nothing our parents gave us ever took her more than a few hours of practice to replicate. Our lessons became a chorus of “Well done Molly!” “That’s my clever girl” “ Do you suppose you could show your brother how to do it?” I suppose I was probably jealous at first, but it quickly passed as I accepted the undeniable. My sister was better at magic than I was. Given what I have already told you about the importance of magic in our daily lives (or lack thereof) it hardly seemed particularly consequential. I could run faster, hold my breath longer, and sew better, while she could spit farther, climb higher, and comprehend ancient, arcane forces from beyond the veil. To a child, these are all equally important. 

By the age of eight, it became apparent to everyone that my sister’s abilities were something extraordinary. Perhaps it was the day when My father sat down to teach us a new enchantment and Molly completed it even before he had finished reading it from the page. Perhaps it was the day she asked me to help her scale the bookshelf, and our parents came home to find her reading _The Grimoire Du Merlock_ on her own. Molly may have gotten a harsh scolding, but I got the feeling that secretly my mother was quite pleased. 

I have one memory I can recall with great clarity, which foreshadowed things to come. Molly and I were “playing rough” as my parents used to call it. She was gripping my back and punching me as I bit her leg and tried to grab the toy that she was trying to keep out of my reach. I can’t even remember what the toy was, but you know how children are. I was convinced that she was doing me a grave injustice, she believed likewise. Neither of us had great control over how we moved and in our childish rage, we knocked over a table with a bowl of fruit placed near the door to offer guests. As soon as we realized what we had done, stillness came over us, the stillness of children who were only just learning what guilt felt like. The bowl was one of the finest of our family’s material possessions, a wedding gift from our grandparents. Whichever of our parents discovered it, we knew there would be a serious punishment. 

In the midst of resigning myself to a month without my favorite toys, a dangerous thought occurred to me. Not three nights ago we had been demonstrating to mother how well we had mastered a simple mending spell. While I was barely able to rejoin two halves of a snapped button, Molly was able to unify the four sections of an apple. How much harder could a clay bowl be? Upon suggesting the idea to Molly, she instantly agreed. Dashing into our parent’s room, she grabbed one of the rudimentary amulets we had been working with, and with my help, she pulled a spellbook off the shelf. Seeing the spell again and remembering its complexity, I began to doubt her ability, but before my eyes, she held the pendant aloft, recited a stanza of Akkadian, and the bowl was mended. Mother and father would never know. 

As we salvaged what we could of the fruit, washing what we could and throwing what we couldn’t to the pigs, Molly informed me that, since she had fixed the bowl, I should be the one to say I ate the fruit. I conceded though I knew it would likely mean going without dinner that night. Fair was fair, after all. 

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that was the beginning, and if everything Magica would later do wasn’t somehow my fault for planting that seed. In all likelihood, it made no difference. Given her nature and our environment, I usually conclude, something would have started her down that path, whether it was I or someone else. On my darker nights, however, I can convince myself that all the blame does rest squarely on my shoulders, that I deserve my fate.


	2. Chapter 2

Adults are often amazed at how quickly children can form friendships. That was certainly the case with us. I’m sure our parents weren’t fond of the idea of us galavanting around with the children of lesser members of the community, and they certainly made no effort to introduce us to anyone our own age. Nevertheless, we were rambunctious children, and our parents’ busy lives left us with many an hour unsupervised. It was one of these hours when an errant ball fell into our yard, where we were playing some amorphous game of our own invention. Molly immediately ran to look at it. I ran to see where it had come from. Over the fence were a trio of ducklings, the youngest of them perhaps halfway in age between Molly and I, while the oldest certainly had nearly a year on me (I would later find out she was more than two years my senior). I didn’t quite know what to say, having by this time little experience with strangers, so it came as a relief when she spoke first. 

“Are you really witches?” It was the eldest who asked. She stood tall and wore a scowl as if to convey that she was not someone to mess with, even if we were witches. 

“No, but Mother and Father are.” I replied, “Who’re you?” 

“I’m Bethany, and that’s John and Susan” She gestured to the other two children in dissenting height order. “We’re-” 

“Is this your ball?” My sister interrupted whatever it was Bethany was going to say. “If we give it back, can we play with you?” 

The other children looked apprehensive at the notion until Susan spoke up. “Our Ma’ said not to talk to you or else you’ll put a curse on us.” 

Molly took this superstitious fabrication in such perfect stride that a part of me wondered if maybe she really could curse someone. “Well, we promise not to curse you if you teach us the rules. Please?” 

Bethany seemed to weigh her options. With hindsight, I can guess she was weighing the danger of getting cursed against having two more people to boss around, but at the time I found her inscrutable. “Well alright, but you have to come into our yard. Ma’ll paddle us if we go into yours.” 

Just like that, Molly and I had made our first set of friends. 

***** 

Though our parents were less than pleased to learn that we were associating with children of “lesser families,” they did little to stop us, except vocally express their disapproval. We knew that as long as they never came around to our house and we were always back by dinner, we wouldn’t be in any real trouble. 

The DaSilva siblings, for their part, got over their fears quickly. At first, they were wary of our alleged power, but I inadvertently dispelled them of that notion rather quickly. They had a fire pit in their yard, from which we found a childish glee in setting leaves and sticks alight. One day Beth and John both forgot their flints, and rather than run back to the house for them, I offered to light a fire with magic. I did this not merely to spare them a trip, but also in the hopes of impressing them with my familial power. John and Susan’s awestruck eyes were all the encouragement I needed, and I had my amulet out before Bethany had time to weigh in. The incantation, however, was a lengthy one, and in my haste, I misspoke it twice and had to start over. Having taken longer than if I had let them go back to the house, the flame I produced was so small and unimpressive that they were forever dissuaded from any sort of reverence or respect, other than that typically shared between playmates. 

Molly, for her part, told me I had done a very good job. Teasing me for my relative lack of ability had long since lost any appeal to her, particularly after she had accidentally driven me to tears some years previous. Since then she had been content to treat me with a humble maturity quite out of character with her behavior in other respects, as well as her actual age. 

After my failed _coup de grace_ , the DaSilva’s quite naturally doubted not only my power, but that of my whole family, and that disillusionment spread through the neighborhood as well. Once we began tumbling through people’s gardens and falling down hills like any other kids, it was difficult to maintain the same mystique. I suspect that is precisely what my parents feared when we began making other friends, but they were never so uncouth as to say so outright. 

If I had to choose a tipping point, it would be the day that we got paddled for the first time. Mrs. Levin was Mrs. DaSilva’s sister and like a second mother to Beth, John, and Susan. We saw the loving, affectionate side of this relationship quickly, and not long afterward it was extended to us. With it came to the responsibility to discipline us, a power employed rarely, but unabashedly when it proved necessary. Such was the case when occupied by a rambunctious game of freeze tag, Molly accidentally jostled the pot in which Mrs. Levin was making soup, spilling nearly half of it in the fire. The four of us in the room, in addition to a thorough telling-off for having run in the house, each got a fair complement of discipline to our rear ends, delivered with a wooden spoon. The spanks were light and altogether could barely be considered painful, but to Molly and I, it was quite baffling. Our parents rejected that sort of thing on principle. As we continued our play, what little pain we may have felt was soon forgotten. 

After we had all returned to our respective homes for supper, the memory came back to me, and I asked Mother why she had never paddled us. Upon learning what had occurred, she grew incised, as did my father when she told him. My mother could be downright terrifying when angered, and even though it wasn’t directed at us, Molly and I were nearly cowering then. When she beckoned us to follow her to the Levin household, it was all we could do to maintain a safe distance. 

As fearful as we knew to be, we expected Mrs. Levin to begin groveling and begging for mercy. Indeed, when Mother began to chastise her for having the audacity to lay a hand on her children, for a moment it seemed that the years of hushed whispers and averted eyes would win out. I suspect everyone was surprised when she instead drew herself up to her full height, smoothed out her feathers, and told my mother that if she didn’t want her children being punished, then she had best make sure they were always on their best behavior. 

Mother was at a loss for words. It’s possible no one, save Father, had been so direct with her in decades. Though she tried to leave with her pride intact, it was clear on our way back home that she felt she had lost something vital.


End file.
